'Near another farmhouse a thick bay hedge shut in an orchard. The straight, shining stems rose immovable, crowned with their glistening foliage. One of the bay trees was enveloped in the embrace of a clematis, which lovingly conquered the martial bay with her blossoms of snow, the veil of her nuptial freshness. Underneath, the earth was dewy and fragrant. In an angle a black cross leaned over the hedge, the silence had the resigned sadness of a graveyard. At the end of a line there arose a flight of steps, half in shade, half in sunshine; they led to a door standing half open, protected by two branches of olive hung from its rustic architrave. On the lowest step sat an old man asleep, his head uncovered, his chin on his breast, his hands on his knees; the light touched his aged brow. From the half-open door there came, to soothe his senile sleep, the cadence of a rocking cradle, the rise and fall of a murmured lullaby.' [Footnote 2: Campanulas, spotted orchis, or foxglove, I suppose. It it characteristic of him that he sighs for an 'unseizable secret,' and does not take the trouble to learn the names of the flowers he sees.] What can be more true or more beautiful than this? Mark the contrast of the old man sleeping on the stone steps, with the young mother, unseen within, singing _sotto voce_ her cradle song. In totally different style and tone take these few lines on Orvieto:-- 'A rock of tufa hanging above a melancholy valley; a city so silent that it seems empty: the windows are closed, in the grey lanes grass grows; a capuchin crosses a square; a bishop descends from a closed carriage before the gate of a hospital; a tower rises in a white and rainy sky; a clock strikes the hour slowly; all at once at the end of the street a miracle in stone--the Cathedral.' Is not the city of Luca Signorelli set before you with those few lines? There is here something far beyond dexterity or ingenuity of style; there is the poet's, the painter's, power to embrace a world at a glance, and with a touch set before duller eyes that world in all its varieties and suggestions, all its past and its present, all its secrets of the grave and of the future. Take again this very different picture:-- 'He found the gorse. 'On a tableland the thickly-growing gorse had flowered so densely as to spread a vast golden mantle over all the soil. Five maidens were gathering the flowers and filling with them skips and baskets, singing as they worked. They sang a song of thirds and fives in perfect harmony. When one of them reached a special phrase she lifted her whole bust out of the yellow maze of blossom that the notes might go forth from her throat with fuller liberty, and held it long sustained in air, looking her companions in the eyes whilst they applauded with their hands of flowers.